Recent postings on the MMD have given the impression that we are just
now reaching the Holy Grail of note-for-note accurate reconstruction of
a master from a playing copy of a roll.  Wayne Stahnke has been doing
this for well over 10 years.  I have cut rolls from his files and they
are dead-on accurate copies of the original.

Wayne championed the cause for years, and finally gave up trying to
convince folks that this was the way to go.  Most people seemed quite
satisfied with "good enough" copies that sounded right on their
instruments, and in most cases these copies were very close to the
original.  However, the copies were not reconstructions of the original
master, which meant aligning the punches on the original grid lines
(step position).  He has continued to quietly read rolls for a few
people, among them Dave Saul, whose perforator is capable of advancing
at the original step size.  Dave's rolls are punch-for-punch accurate
copies of the reconstructed masters, and they are probably more
accurate than some of the rolls sold to the public.

Wayne wrote a complete suite of programs to process the files from the
reader to punched rolls.  His PUNCH program made it possible for me to
make accurate rolls, it controls nearly everything one could imagine
for a perforator and is absolutely bulletproof.  VIEW is a good editor,
as well as being able to convert from different formats, such as MIDI,
which is the output of Warren Trachtman's reader programs, to the
WEB/ANN format used in Wayne's suite.  CHOP produces any sort of
chaining pattern one could want, and JOINWEB concatenates files for
making, for instance, multi-tune rolls from individual files.  All of
the above were used in creating John Farrell's new A-rolls.

I am deeply indebted to Wayne for the pioneering work he has done in
the roll reproducing field.

Bob Billings